The idea for this blog is blatantly stolen from my roommate, Michael James Gossett, who is much better at blogging than I am. You can find his blog here. It’s really quite interesting. His posts take the form of a list of ten things, which range from poems he likes to music videos. I think that this blog will take a very similar form, albeit shorter (hence FiveThings). I’ve chosen to use Tumblr because it doesn’t put an annoying bar across the top like Blogger, and allows for some extra customization with layouts, posts, whatever. If this is something I manage to keep up I might move to something a little more sophisticated like Moveable Type, but for now I’m keeping it as simple as possible.
I’ve started this mostly because in the last few weeks I’ve come across or created things that I felt the need to share. When I was in high school, LiveJournal served this purpose; all my friends had one and so it was really pretty easy to use it as a communication tool. This will be a bit different in execution, but the idea’s still the same. I’ve also been inspired by my Existentialism class. My professor, Dr. Johnson, is an avid blogger and she’s experimenting a bit this semester by utilizing a blog as a forum for discussion outside of class. Blogging also constitutes the bulk of our writing for the semester.
I’ve never been good at journaling, so here’s a start. I figure if I can puzzle out just five things every few days, I’ll be on the road to regular writing—I’m very, very out of practice with writing regularly, with the exception of philosophy papers. This will be a nice break from that.
I am a junior Philosophy major at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, and I graduated in 2006 from the Alabama School of Fine Arts with a focus in Creative Writing; I was born in Decatur, AL and have spent most of my life in Birmingham. I spend my free time playing guitar (sometimes with Plasma Youth, sometimes on my own), working on my college’s radio station, and driving back and forth between Memphis and Birmingham to see my lovely girlfriend, Cate. I am the director of the Computer Depot on campus, so I also spend a lot of time fixing computers. I read comic books, I modify guitar pedals, I play video games, and now—hopefully—I will write a lot. Welcome to the experiment.
Well, I’m going to start everything with a music video from a band I just found out about, Vivian Girls. They’re an interesting blend of punk and shoegaze, and I quite like it. Their first full-length is out October 7th on In the Red. Here’s the video for their song “Tell the World” (via Stereogum via P4K.tv):
